LTER: Synthesizing population and community synchrony to understand drivers of ecological stability across LTER sites

Principal Investigators:

Lauren M. Hallett, Daniel Reuman, and Katharine N. Suding

Understanding factors that influence ecological stability is a key question in ecology. Population ecology has highlighted that synchrony within a species over space is an important indicator of species stability. Community ecology, in contrast, has highlighted that asynchrony between species within space may enhance the stability of aggregate properties (such as total productivity). Using LTER data, we will integrate population and community approaches to synchrony to understand drivers of ecosystem stability at different scales. We will apply... more

Understanding factors that influence ecological stability is a key question in ecology. Population ecology has highlighted that synchrony within a species over space is an important indicator of species stability. Community ecology, in contrast, has highlighted that asynchrony between species within space may enhance the stability of aggregate properties (such as total productivity). Using LTER data, we will integrate population and community approaches to synchrony to understand drivers of ecosystem stability at different scales. We will apply cutting-edge statistical techniques (e.g., wavelet analyses, variance decomposition) to long-term, spatially replicated data from terrestrial and aquatic LTER sites in order to: 1) understand the timescales at which synchrony occurs, 2) identify drivers of synchrony and 3) integrate the effects of population and community synchrony on ecological stability. Our diverse group consists of terrestrial and aquatic ecologists with synthesis experience and quantitative ecologists with strong analytical skills. Final products from the working group will include an R package containing our analytical tools, a data workflow and derived data product, and a series of papers synthesizing causes and consequences of synchrony across the LTER network.
collapse